You know the story, how people will travel thousands of miles to see the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, but don’t take advantage of the amazing roadside attractions in their own backyards, then express profound regrets when they disappear.

I admit it. I’m guilty, too. I missed my senior class trip to Riverview Park in Chicago. The next year, the famous amusement park at Western and Belmont was gone.

For all the years “The Time Museum” was here at the Clock Tower Resort, I never toured it. Oh, I knew that the now-late gazillionaire Seth G. Atwood had amassed an amazing, historically important collection of time pieces from around the world. It was just that whenever I was headed to the Clock Tower, I was working. Either I was playing in a band for a wedding reception, class reunion or New Year’s Eve party, or I was there to cover a news conference or civic banquet for the newspaper. I never made time to visit the Time Museum.

Now the clocks are gone. We tell time by “hand held electronic devices” and I regret that I never bothered to stop and take time to watch the clocks run.

I still wonder: Did they all chime at once, and if so, what the heck did that cacophony sound like?

At least I didn’t miss out on the delightful riverboat luncheon cruise on the Rock River — yes, our very own Rock River — on the Pride of Oregon, the riverboat that until Sunday featured two-hour cruises from Maxson Manor, up the river from Oregon to near Byron and back.

Owner Rich Weisner, 66, has decided to pack it in and retire after two decades spending most of his time helming Maxson Restaurant/boat combination. So, last week featured the last run for the Pride of Oregon — for now, anyway.

I almost missed it. See, I’ve travelled hundreds of times up and down Illinois 2, or “the River Road,” as my dad called it. He was born in 1907 and remembered when the dirt wagon path was first paved in the 1920s. It’s one of the most scenic drives this side of Galena. And though I’ve often thought “I’ve got to ride on that boat ” whenever I saw the paddle wheeler plying the river, I never did.

Until three weeks ago, that is. My wife and I thought that her 89-year old mother, who recently recovered from a broken leg, would enjoy the trip, and so I booked passage, as they say in the shipping business.

It was just two days later that I read on an Ogle County area website that the boat and restaurant were closing at the end of October. Whew! I’d made it with just three weeks to spare!

Page 2 of 2 - And I’m glad I did. The trees on the bluffs above the river were beginning to turn. The view of the statue we commonly call “Black Hawk,” was spectacular at such close range. The luncheon was buffet-style, and tasty, too.

The cruise featured two entertainers who played banjo and guitar and sang folk and blues songs appropriate to traveling on a riverboat. Not quite like the late John Hartford, who in the 1990s sang on the Julia Belle Swain, a steamboat on the Illinois River out of Peoria, but close, really close.

This was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and I would enthusiastically recommend it — if I could. I’m hopeful a new owner will buy the business and have it ready to go again in the spring of 2014.

I advise you to make a list of “amazing roadside attractions” in your area, and begin to visit them. Don’t take anything for granted.